Continuing our liberal bubble-bursting exercise, the core foursome address more directly the question of how philosophy is supposed to shape one's political views and actions. Is there a non-partisan way of describing "the public good" that we can use as a touchstone to communicate with and maybe convince political opponents? What's a philosophically responsible way to use political rhetoric in the face of an apathetic and/or ignorant public? Is one better off hiding in a cave until the bad administration goes away?

Comments

I disagree with the generalization of the other side as hating women. The whole rhetorical strategy of “you say this is what you’re concerned about, but in reality this is what’s going on” is just unproductive, and it’s something that both sides do all the time. It is an attempt to “out-narrate” them. To use a contrasting example, I have a moral objection to my tax dollars being used by police to murder unarmed black men. I have a right as a citizen to object to this and call for certain reforms. However, when I bring up these objections, many of my friends on the right will say that “You just hate cops. You’re just a spiteful cop hater. You don’t appreciate the difficult work that they do for you. So on and so on.” In reality, I don’t hate cops at all. I recognize they have a very difficult job, but I don’t want them using unjustified lethal force. Their characterization of “hating cops” is a ridiculous misrepresentation of my concerns. It just reeks of dismissive superiority.

I honestly don’t see how the rhetoric of the Left concerning abortion is any different: “Get out of my vagina. Stop trying controlling women’s bodies. You just hate women.” It is a ridiculous misrepresentation of their concerns that seems to indicate that we were never even interested in hearing their concerns.

Ultimately, giving a universal account of “personhood” seems to be impossible. I think the best course of action is to ask people to embody their politics. In other words, if you have a moral convictions that abortion is wrong well then how many babies have you adopted? The use of individualistic rights language can sometimes actually add to the oppression of women. If the woman has exclusive right to determine what is to happen to a fetus, then men as men will often exercise their implied equivalent right to have nothing to do with the child bearing or the child. The woman is therefore left with the sole responsibility for the impossibly enormous task of raising a child. This may be why it does not always feel as if all women who decide to have an abortion are doing so because they are exercising their right to choose. Quite the opposite, it seems often that women have abortions because they feel as if they have no other choice. There are plenty of situations where a woman may have actually wanted to have the child but simply feel as if she has no choice given her situation. It is exactly because of men and the surrounding community exercising their implied right in relation to women’s right to the fetus that women are sometimes robbed of the opportunity to make a truly “free” choice. One thing that both sides of this debate can agree on, which is often ignored, is our incredible failure to be the type of people who can provide women the communal support necessary to be making truly free choices about whether or not to have a child. If there is any common ground at all, any place where meaningful dialogue can begin at all (although I doubt that there is), then it may be here. Developing organizations, communities, families, and Churches alike that can provide meaningful support to a 14 year old to make a more nearly free choice is something both parties should be interested in. Neither those who are concerned about the life of the fetus, nor those who are concerned with the freedom of woman can simply say, “It’s your problem deal with it.”

Okay, listening longer I now regret posting that long-winded thing about abortion. In the beginning I thought the whole discussion was about abortion. I would have edited it, but I guess editing isn’t possible. This discussion is more about how best to participate in public discourse than it is specifically about abortion. In that case, here is a David Foster Wallace quote that I have tried to take to heart throughout this election season.

“A Democratic Spirit is one that combines rigor and humility, i.e., passionate conviction plus a sedulous respect for the convictions of others. As any American knows, this is a difficult spirit to cultivate and maintain, particularly when it comes to issues you feel strongly about. Equally tough is a Democratic Spirit’s criterion of 100 percent intellectual integrity – you have to be willing to look honestly at yourself and at your motives for believing what you believe, and to do it more or less continually.

This kind of stuff is advanced US citizenship. A true Democratic Spirit is up there with religious faith and emotional maturity and all those other top-of-the-Maslow-Pyramid-type qualities that people spend their whole lives working on. A Democratic Spirit’s constituent rigor and humility and self-honesty are, in fact, so hard to maintain on certain issues that it’s almost irresistibly tempting to fall in with some established dogmatic camp and to follow that camp’s line on the issue and to let your position harden within the camp and become inflexible and to believe that the other camps are either evil or insane and spend all your time and energy trying to shout over them. I submit, then, that is indisputably easier to be Dogmatic than Democratic, especially about issues that are both vexed and highly charged.”

The one Seth and Wes danced around about different audiences: talking to our friends vs political operatives. How we speak is shaped by the audience. I think blogs can be useful.

The other is talking about vs doing. Implicit in Seth’s comment about where he was going with his politics. Much of social activism now is issue focused (divesting from fossil fuels, housing, minimum income and so one; it isn’t political party focused) and locally focused (farmers markets, civic rather than federal or even state); which makes the avoidance of untrustworthy media easier – if you see what is happening locally you can more easily tell how much bull is being talked by government.

Focusing locally is often the way to build cross-party coalitions. When both Democrat and Republican families need food (housing/ jobs/ healthcare) ideology is more easily set aside.

“Much of social activism now is issue focused (divesting from fossil fuels, housing, minimum income and so on; it isn’t political party focused)”

I wonder about this. Politically, I understand how a Bernie Sanders supporter could vote for Hillary Clinton (or a Ted Cruz supporter for Donald Trump), We trust polling *enough* to recognize that a vote for Faith Spotted Eagle is an exercise in expression while a vote R or D is an exercise in (binary) choice.

However, I cannot see a pattern (besides party focus) in *which* issues of injustice provoke a riot. Even the most parochial social activists don’t riot (yet) over drone strikes or private prisons, despite ostensible opposition to these practices.

Wes’s admonishment for the left to dialogue is naive. For the past 25 years, the American left has generally tried to conduct rational discourse while the right has viciously attacked them. The left has made policy arguments and appeals to reason while the right attacks and scapegoats the left. Whenever the left questioned W., the response was that they were unpatriotic if they did not get in line behind the president. When Obama tried to engage the right, the strategy was to obstruct at every turn. While the left tried to engage in discourse, the right has systematically attacked the institutional power of the left: euthanizing the last remnants of organized labor, killing community organizations like ACORN through bogus videos, and even obstructing voting rights.

Some on the left are still trying to “talk it out” even while their opponents are going for the jugular.

On another issue raised… what’s the role of philosophy for thinkers under Trump? I’m reading Arendt(fantastic) and Popper (meh), and contemplating Boethius’s take on the remnants of a great civilization subjected to the whims of a barbarian tyrant posing as an emperor.

While some on the right definitely have done that (especially the populist right and the blogs/media that services them) I don’t think it’s fair to say the right doesn’t engage. The right often notes that the left doesn’t engage on many issues as well – often again in populist movements. Without getting into a pointless discussion of who does it worse (or what that question could even possibly mean) I think it’s fair to say we’d be better off if we’d engage the strongest arguments from each side. That often just doesn’t happen. Instead many on both sides prefer to attack the weakest arguments – especially if they can then tar the whole movement.

It seems the intellectual right (as opposed to the populist right, which Trump is appealing to) have some fairly well staked out claims that just rarely get engaged with. (I’d add that at least in America the far left gets ignored even more by the center left – at least the center left engages somewhat with conservatives)

Wes is naive? Another person somewhere commented about how they were annoyed with Wes’s liberal partisan comments so I’m convinced we all listened to a different podcast. But seriously – it is some kind of blind spot not to see how both sides are generally completely unreasonable most of the time. There is no place for a moderate. And by moderate I mean someone who doesn’t use the most extreme examples of each party to represent them.

Yes! In this vein, I enthusiastically cosign Wes’s critique of Seth’s characterisation of abortion opponents. Seth’s claim that it’s all about misogyny breaks down when you look at polls finding that the antiabortion position is more prevalent among women than among men. In particular, large numbers of married women who have had children are viscerally and emotionally horrified by the idea of abortion.

This is compounded by the fact that the pro-choice side is generally so uncompromising that as Wes said, they want to inflexibly defend the right to abortion 10 minutes before birth. I have advocated for a policy that not only allows early term abortion but guarantees women have proximity to clinics and financial help if needed. But later abortion would only be allowed if a judge ordered it because of special circumstances.

Every time I have floated this idea, it is the pro-choice side that has most histrionically screamed for my scalp. Even though most abortions already occur within the first half of pregnancy, and every pregnant woman goes through that first half, to hear them tell it I am as atavistic and misogynistic as it gets, obviously looking to put all women in chains. Which is a great example of what they were discussing in Part One about how the left can also be guilty of catastrophizing and spinning wildly overblown predictions that ignore all nuance.

The end result, as Jennifer says, is that anyone with moderate or center-left positions gets discouraged from taking part in public dialogue on Twitter or elsewhere because the blowback is so fierce. Which just further purifies the extremism of those progressives who do participate, and keeps them from even being exposed to moderate positions. Therefore any moderate position just looks to them like an extreme right position, because they are not confronted with moderation often enough to recognize it for what it is, or to learn any factual/logical/rhetorical counterarguments. So instead they just trot out the talking points they use against extreme right-wingers.

The activists probably yell the most because at least a significant number of them hold to a “life begins at conception” ontology. Yet if you look at polls that view is the minority one. From what I can tell most in the pro-life movement favor a position pretty close to what you outline. i.e. restricting abortion to the first trimester, and then limiting abortions in the 2cd or 3rd trimester with some sense of due process. (A common complaint among the pro-life movement is that allowing doctors to decide is akin opening a floodgate similar to how some doctors prescribe opioids knowing they are being abused)

From what I can tell the fact so many in the pro-life movement are open to first trimester abortion but oppose 2cd/3rd trimester suggests much more openness than discussions suggest. And of course there are many strong pro-life figures who simply don’t hold the the more Thomist conception of life/personhood beginning at conception. (Mormons being an obvious example)

This episode doesn’t seem to be showing up in the podcast feed. I deleted the feed and readded to my podcast player and only episode 1 is showing up (along with all the prior episodes) Is this a bug in the rss?

Wes thinks “everyone can agree” that gerrymandering is bad. I don’t agree! Democrats actually need to engage in some serious gerrymandering ourselves. If we have computers design districts that are compact and use logical county or city boundaries, it’s advantage GOP. That’s because Democrats tend to cluster strongly into cities, so nice compact districts will be 90% Democratic in urban areas and leave a lot of votes wasted.

So any time Democrats can get control of state legislatures, they need to gerrymander the hell out of congressional districts. The simplest way to do this is to take a metropolitan area, and the rural areas surrounding it, and draw districts that are like pie wedges. You get enough strong Democratic votes from the pointy tip of the wedge that they slightly outnumber the rural and exurban Republicans in the fat part of the triangle.

Wes is right about rhetoric, but it’s hard to know what rhetorical strategy to use when everybody has a different media diet in the modern, balkanized media landscape. That and the Great Sort are deteriorating any sense of common understanding.

As to strategies, tell stories about individuals that illustrate the policy choices.

Most citizens aren’t complete ideologues.

The bigger picture. Start recruiting people in ways to meet immediate needs (child care, food, work). This will usually involve people from various kinds of politics; from there it will be possible to begin working together for a desired future. It is (kind of) beginning by avoiding politics – and in another sense practising a politics of building a world where all can benefit.

I will put my partisanship up front as a student of rhetoric, and I appreciate hearing some philosophy folks showing an appreciation for our discipline. Perhaps age-old divides can be bridged 🙂

Parts of the funeral oration of Pericles feel very relevant right now. He talked about the glory of Athens and how it didn’t rely on mass deportations of people or secret weapons but “the courage and loyalty” of its people. If you’re looking for solace, that’s not a bad place to go.

As a repeat critic of Wes on the topic of god (lower case “g” intended) and religion, I would just like to say that he was in my opinion the clear star of the show in these two episodes on politics. He spoke wonderfully well throughout and I came away with a desire to be generally less judgmental and more open minded. I will probably struggle most when it comes to the idea of a god but I will at least attempt to be more charitable to “the other” when it comes to their belief.

Maybe Wes could extend the same courtesy he espouses in general to the specific cases of Sam Harris and Daniel Dennett and he might also like to read “The Fallacy Of Fine-Tuning” to disabuse himself of the notion that the “the world being very finely tuned on several physical parameters” is non-controversial. But now I’m off and running on religion again!

Congratulations to all the regulars on these two episodes. I still think the best episodes are those without guests. Everyone spoke well but it was Wes at his best who took away the MVP.

Yeah, Wes is generally the PELer I agree with most often, so I am always surprised and disconcerted when he throws in a little dig at Sam Harris, who is the public intellectual I agree with most often. I’d be curious to hear him elaborate, or better yet to hear the two of them debate.

We’ve asked Sam Harris repeatedly (and recently) to come on the podcast, and he refuses to answer my emails despite our getting a reference from Very Bad Wizards (which he did appear on). So either he’s a busy guy deluged with emails, we’re too small potatoes for him, and/or he’s aware of Wes’s dissing and unwilling to engage us.

Huh! Well, good on you for trying. I wouldn’t think it’s the dissing, though, because he has had people on (especially in the past year or so) who were very critical of him, and I don’t think they are any bigger potatoes than you (at least, not all of them). Have you tried hitting him up on Twitter?

On his most recent podcast, coincidentally, he had a guy on with whom he argued for two hours about the definition of “truth”. (I did think in this case Sam should have dropped it and moved on.) In the process, Sam described having taken all of Rorty’s classes at Stanford, arguing strenuously with his professor every step of the way. My reaction was “oops, Rorty sounds awfully familiar…yup, he was the subject of some recent PEL episodes I skipped!” (I immediately went back and listened to them.)

Come to think of it, after that podcast Sam asked listeners to go to the Sam Harris subforum on Reddit to advise him on how he could have handled that logjam better. So Reddit would appear to be his haunt (along with Twitter as I mentioned above). Maybe if you go there and get enough people to upvote an invitation, that would work. Worth a try anyhow. That would absolutely be my favorite thing ever.

Just listened to that Waking Up podcast. I can’t believe how intransigent the guest was in the face of, what I thought at least, what were very persuasive arguments presented by Harris. He just went out of his way to stick to his position even when backed into a ridiculous corner. I don’t think he’s alone either as there has been more than one episode on PEL where the boys have tied themselves in knots using “true” in various ways. I just don’t get it when someone wants to say it’s “true for you” because it’s generally about a belief but the belief is ABOUT SOMETHING and it’s the something that is either true or false, not the belief. For example, they might say that a belief in god is “true for me” if it helps them overcome their fear of death, when all they really mean is that it is USEFUL for them. Nobody can determine whether the god exists but there is a fact of the matter – her either does or doesn’t. It’s just a bastardisation of the meaning of the word true to say that it is “true for you”.

I’m in complete sympathy with your objection to the idea of something being “true for you” or “true for me.” But it seems to me you’ve gotten the details backwards. Beliefs (or sentences, or propositions) are what’s capable of being true or false, not things. Is the coffee cup on my desk true? The question doesn’t make sense; it’s a category mistake. The coffee cup just is. My belief that there’s a coffee cup on the desk is true (if, in fact, there’s a coffee cup on my desk.) In standard correspondence theories of truth, being true is a property of beliefs that correspond to facts, or states of affairs, or what-have-you.

Extremes breed extremes .And the pendulum naturally swings back and forth….our problem would be with the tyranny of those who would prevent that movement,

..I was a lifelong liberal democrat..grew up on the south side of Chicago,we were the last white family to move from the neighborhood where I seen King march…,the riots,the tensions and poverty I came to know well.
Beans ,rice and cornbread and government cheese after my father fourth heart attack..So I would say I came to be highly attuned to ferreting out the contradictions in social justice policies from the democratic party and its application and how it cashed out in the street…economically,culturally and politically,..in Chicago

I am the plumber tradesman (who has listened to the vast bulk of every podcast here ,and thank you I have enjoyed them)
Was it Seth or Dylan….Ill take a second and dispel the idea that plumbers and doctors are in the same income bracket..(ill give you the benefit of metaphor as well lol)..
Though I got where you were going with it….The working people who yes have been severely put upon in large by globalization and its dynamics.. they are compelled by all the same motivations and needs..and have a thirst for an equality of more than an income bracket they may share with a more educated fellow citizen…..and therefore yes there may be a bend to their view..but more precisely the bend these days would seem to come from a marginalization not from the doctor or academic but from the medias depiction and marginalization of their being a people on their way out..and are somehow morally corrupt historically speaking based upon things they neither participated in or neither condone but guilty by virtue of their whiteness…and when they are working white also struggling….check to check.. the narrative is just an attack on their mental wellbeing….

It is a sad fact, that the dynamics of a working class living make’s you so much more prone to external forces ..we wish (some of us) to be more internally directed,though as the necessities and vicissitudes at times seem to eat us alive… making people in general…(and people,even more predisposed in particular)..,less likely to seek out truths and vet sources……..and ,more likely to give the nod of legitimacy to sources that have the loudest most resource laden voices..
No wonder the people…..working class and educated alike (whose socializations bends their take a well) ….think they are getting.. by and large.. an authentic look at the facts…..minus nuance of course and thru 60 second sound bites..lol
(when, what is it …it is ONLY 6 corporations that own 90 percent of all you see,hear and read..Gore Vidal and many around the globe seen that alone as unhealthy and a testimony to whats wrong with our worldview here in the colonies.in between two great oceans)

And although most of the tradesman I know would probably rightly be characterized as being of the popular culture,not all share a dogmatic approach to their political sentiments..Like most people they have varied positions that a two party system ,fails to represent
For instance,..I believe in climate change and a woman’s right to choose..though also believe in keeping the thin line of deterrence to tyranny… gun rights..And am dismayed by the lefts strict and even tyrannical assertion of an extreme brand of political correctness..One where I can make the same argument as Wes in regard to truth and the good… Where do I go?

In fact( an essentially) two party system..and the interest political and private who want to keep it that way.. seems to fail most Americans in that respect ,I became assured of that when I compared notes with my republican friends…And now as an independent( not just an sentiment anymore) I voted for policy of greater goods and lesser evils ,(not personality or the hyperbole…..)where they could be known,with an expectation that the evils would probably be realized and the goods tainted…And it didnt just come from my strong beliefs about (a) or (B)….My socialization and experiential knowledge tells me a different story in regards to how power works out there economically,culturally..If you have ever been on the losing side of a power struggle with real time consequences then you start to call things out by their more authentic name……too your sense anyways..

.As the years passed I became disenchanted with the democratic rhetoric (and actions) concerning social justice when on the other hand its behaviour was equally inline with republican behaviour in regards to economics……the way it panned out… and the smoke and mirrors of a systemically corrupt system seems to feed either one set of wealthy or another…..

While,.creating a welfare state for the wealthy on one side…and then an equally powerful left oligarchic extreme….Whose emphasis and effect ,psychically,culturally,legally etc is ,just scapegoating and marginalizing white working people Trumps base..(seemingly as a central element of their sense of equality……). as they worked their supposed social justice equation………transferring injustice from one color of working people to another color who also, many are just trying to make ends meet doesn’t qualify as serving justice.. All this while technology and automation and this brand of globalization were thrust upon us with a rapidity that serves the wealthy mightily but has destabilized the industrialized nations…and wrecked havoc on the poor…..our poor are dying in many ways..I see it everyday…

And all this profiteering thru globalization.. All this while fostering a sort of extreme interpretation of the goods that we achieved from progressivism….making these goods work to bind us,instead of do the work of good works…

While as throughout history, branding all value as coming from the same people,who have always claimed that they know better though always seem to lead us in the direction of so called free trade instead of fair trade for instance (their ends and our servitude)..these are the same people who know that powerful interest are served powerfully and weaker interest accordingly.and they create a moral narrative that’s reinforced by a now 24/7 mouthpiece that’s too say the least scary..

And it is a few Seth who benefit from globalization ….because a 400 big screen tv is nice,but losing a 22 hr job,trading it in for a 10 dollar an hour job…….Well all the working American can say is keep the tv..(ill pay the 800 bucks)….and the banks and things like the great mortgage fraud defeat us…the people who own the banking and wall street the same guys who supported Hillary and participated in abolishing glass steagall are feasting…To the working man Bill Clinton was a trader….so now hence a Trump..

These few….(,for the tyranny is not just of the many)…seem to work on the same premise as Dylan that their is an inherrent superiority on one hand …but the academics and such who also benefit disproportinately than the working class populace……dont like it much when that false premise is thrust upon them.as with the ivy league supreme court justices.

And I would remind Dylan that as Jefferson and others pointed out (and our constitutional design designates)that the common citizen should be serving…it does not take a rocket scientist to be a public servant,….And expert knowledge is a double edge sword..as money and human nature clouds everything..science and technology in the service of the people,not subjugating their authentic interest under the guise of we know whats good for you..because we have the experts..your entitled to your own opinions but not your own facts..

.Neither are the qualifications a sincere desire to acquire great influence ,foreknowledge and an opportunity to later feed at the trough of corporate lobbyist ..and those lobbyist are supporting interest that work against the public’s interest for both red and blue…

.Maybe its time to yes ( to even teach in our public school system along with emotional competencies) …learn and try to truly dialogue and stop letting the loudest,most extreme voices dominate..but again we go back to human nature and powerful interest and ignorance..,which btw is equally distributed on both sides my friends..thanks all you guys are terrific..

Huh. Speaking of debugging, I read a comment from Daniel Flack via email notification, and clicked “Reply” within the email. It brought me here, and right above this text box it says “Leave a Reply to Daniel Flack”…but Daniel’s comment is nowhere to be seen. What gives?

Sprinkled amongst your verbiage are a couple fair points–particularly about the “extreme brand of political correctness” that has taken hold on college campuses and on progressive Twitter. But mostly, this is just whiny BS, with a whiff of racism (“their supposed social justice equation………transferring injustice from one color of working people to another color”).

The past quarter century has seen the greatest transformation toward “the good” for the greatest number of people in human history, by far. Hundreds of millions have been lifted out of starvation-level poverty. Hundreds of millions more families have risen from basic subsistence to a middle class existence, complete with smartphones and education for their children. (And yes, we’ve also created too many billionaires for my taste–but despite your claim that both sides are the same, it is Democrats who push for more progressive taxation on the wealthy–Hillary Clinton was explicit about this–while Republicans continue to push their discredited “Laffer Curve” in pursuit of ever-decreasing taxation on the one percent.)

There is really only one demographic group in the world that can even make a claim to having lost ground without it being immediately dismissed as laughable: straight white men without college degrees. But even there, the vast majority have in an absolute sense gained ground or at least held steady. But the rest of the world has gotten more well off, so they have lost position only in a *relative* sense. Cry me a frickin’ river.

There are of course a certain number who have indeed lost ground in an absolute sense, in places like the Rust Belt. But even if “standing athwart history and yelling STOP!” were to reestablish everything as it was (a tragically naive notion), what kind of justice would that be? Restore a couple million blue collar white guys, 0.05% of the world’s population, to their former glory, at the cost of throwing BILLIONS back into subsistence poverty or starvation?

And by the way, it is far more than the big screen TV that is made much more affordable by reducing global barriers to trade (even aside from the many jobs that are preserved). Nearly everything you buy, from food to furniture to automobiles, would be drastically more expensive under a protectionist economic scheme. Which cuts the number of people helped by a return to such policies to an even tinier sliver of the pie, and hurts vastly more people. It’s all basically an incoherent reactionary tantrum, one which the chattering class has given far more consideration than it deserves.

Whatever is the “usual” claim, perhaps by people proceeding from their conclusions of a hollowed out middle class, I cannot say. I can however offer this 2016 article from the highly respected Pew organization and written by a leading figure with the also highly respected and left-leaning Brookings think tank:

http://magazine.pewtrusts.org/en/archive/trend-summer-2016/how-a-growing-global-middle-class-could-save-the-worlds-economy
——–
To put today’s speed of growth of the global middle class into perspective, consider its trajectory. In 1820, after the Napoleonic War in Europe, there were probably no more than 2.5 million people out of a worldwide population of 1 billion who were in the middle class. By the beginning of the 20th century, the global middle class was around 90 million strong. By 1975, 150 years after starting its growth phase, the middle class had reached 1 billion people. By 2006, another 1 billion had joined the middle class, and now less than a decade later, we are at 3 billion. The middle class could surpass 4 billion by 2021, making it a majority of the world’s population.

It is definitely a concern, although not nearly as much of one if it were actually the case that “the rich are getting richer, and the poor are getting poorer” (as is the common maxim), instead of “almost everyone is getting richer or staying at the same level of purchasing power, but the rich are doing so exponentially faster”.

I refer you to my OP, in which I wrote:

“And yes, we’ve also created too many billionaires for my taste–but despite your claim that both sides are the same, it is Democrats who push for more progressive taxation on the wealthy–Hillary Clinton was explicit about this–while Republicans continue to push their discredited ‘Laffer Curve’ in pursuit of ever-decreasing taxation on the one percent.”

Well you choose not to answer a lot of points regarding this brand of globalization,including so called free trade verse fair trade,the plight of inner city workers and their families,crime rate’s after the loss of manufacturing etc,the loss of one third of the middle class because of guys like Clinton and Reuben from wall street abolishing glass stegal…,suffering you yourself MAYBE have little experience with…maybe they are crybabies as well…though Ill bet you have never suffered the degree of hardship ,intense labor etc that the working experience..and its funny thinking like yours always calls these people whiners while those doing the name calling..are sitting back feeding off of their labors..And when it all comes down to it,it’s the power to enforce the existing paradigm that makes it all possible..What did Bastiat say about Plunder,the law and morality..

.Though maybe it’s thinking such as yours and personal interest that have you reframing this as a moral deficient on the part of the very guys,who created the wealth and change thru their efforts….(labor non union and otherwise)..unless you have a smattering of elitist sentiment in your worldview in regards to those who produce the value via labor.(So No I am not talking about the people who had access to fractional lending either or the one’s who got us off the gold standard and into a fiat currency)…The value of labor..its usually denigrated by those who dont know the blood,sweat and tears who strictly see it as something to be managed and exploited…While taking credit for all the good that comes out of it…….I was in Afghanistan three times and worked with the defense industry as they fed off the treasury and they acted on a mentality that would rather have the troops living in a 130f tent when the A/C broke )and ,until they could maximize their profit from the situation…in fact..they would admonish me not to cannibalize part’s from other non working units,even if it meant troops coming back from patrol might be able to suffer less……(i kept taking care of the troops first,lets just say that)..so lets be real..
.I have seen enough suffering in my life,please do not play the role of caring about the plight of those around the world when ,you are negating and diminishing those in your own nation….your thinking reminds me of that

I find it interesting that your profiling me Alan….I am actually part latino and Indigenous Indian,my best friend is a black man and my family is pretty representative of the nation lol.
Let me add when I speak of experiential knowledge it doesn’t surprize me.(.and Ill profile your thinking here) that college educated white guys who didn’t grow up having the knockout game practiced on him as a ten year old while growing up in englewood on the south side of Chicago during the height of the race riots couldnt relate and whats more wouldnt attempt to…..but they will characterize your experience….

Further,It appears its you crying the river,..,in fact you want to cry a river for everyone but hard working white men… (and its obviously not just white men,but the working class………,its just that non affluent whiteness is dismissed outright)….,your mentality is symptomatic of (if there such a thing) a reverse racism..one where any injustice visited upon working white people is irrelative and focused on framing them as portraying the victim and a selfish one at that…,afterall, we prefer our families to the rest of the world…..And what were really talking about here concerning globalization in general are the working poor and all others living meager paycheck to paycheck (not just white ness lol) as those other’s who feast and do so arrogantly, and do so thru leverage, as opposed to the authentic earning of a thing…..sounds like gamesmanship. your defending

,So my point as too using the term whiteness (as I have seen racism coming at me from all races and in the street, out in the world of working in the ghettos for the last 26 years… black gangs,extreme racist sentiment from non white,and even skin heads and covert white racism lol,..my life experience has seen all the sides)…
My point was,any who have not achieved a political currency within the politically correct len’s …..(as being put upon,by white privilege)…according to their lens. is not …,does not… have legitimate concerns regarding marginalization and scapegoating or ,regarding economic injustice and ..the very thinking that you are exhibiting..
.The irony in regards to a transference of injustice is in large part it’s the same people doing the leveraging…and the sad thing is the poor of all colors are kept divided as they fight for the scraps…..One must have the actual experience and lived the life of those you are boo-hooing..

We are not victims,in fact we are the value makers of the nation and like in a plane where the oxygen mask drop,our working people must put theirs on first and foremost…but you want to squeeze the hose and put the whole ball of wax deeper into the hands of the globally vested under the pretense that ,its ok if we destroy our great good, and the possible good of our working class,,as long as the extreme wealthy,their proxies and minions (who maintain a similar value structure). get theirs……

..The manipulation is that this brand of globalization… (like Clinton cooperating with Rubin from wall street to abolish glass steagall…and the access it created for the wall street etc….,at the expense of one third of the middle class,who never came back (u.s counties only 7 % really recovered)……..that Hillarys ten dollar an hour jobs wouldn’t even begin to fill)……) and its direct and most extreme beneficiaries maintain a so called free trade instead of fair trade as a necessary ingredient….. and that all the other fall out such as …. ,loss of national sovereignty issues…. and all that comes with creating the monsters of such great economic proportions and their power structure………and most importantly to me this keeping the wealth distribution in such a way where many of all colors etc get the shaft.
.

You can frame this paradigm as lifting up the world…when in reality its more about promoting the interest, a particular value system and its adherents benefit from……the power structure and its beneficiaries… and further if we as a people must. smile and nod our agreement with an equation where 20 % of the populace own 80% of the wealth and so on with the .1 percent needing two graphs on the cbo charts……….and further to in time erase our national identity and sovereignty effectively..and lose our constitutional guarantees to fit this paradigm and their great good and mischief…..well extremes have bred extremes and its time to look to national interest that do not serve globally vested interest and its beneficiaries here first and foremost…but instead our good first…..do not kill the golden goose..

I would like to see a world where good prevails for as many as can have it based on their efforts and their having an opportunity to have an opportunity,the sanctity of life and due process for all…but I see a nation where 80 percent of our population owns only 20 percent of the wealth and a world where,400 families own half the wealth…I see homelessness,drug addiction,joblessness,crime,families damaged children and broken men..Everyone of working status gets it..,injustice at the hands of a more powerful class is a necessary ingredient in life ..Who was it Hume maybe/ Who said “All the evil that was ,is and ever will be is necessary for all the good that can be”.but a lot of these working poor etc get whose zooming who…
.Really Alan projecting ones selfishness as Our selfishness sounds like one of those dark impulses Wes was talking about..

At least here you added a caveat (“MAYBE”), whereas in the rest of your rant you just full on made the assumption that I’m privileged. And I am privileged by global standards (kind of my point). By U.S. standards? Not so much. Some facts about me, FYI:

–I don’t have a college degree.
–I’ve never earned more than ten bucks an hour at any job.
–I went without health insurance from 1996 to 2015, and I still have only a barebones HDHP with a HSA.
–My kids have only had health insurance all their lives because of Medicaid, thanks in part to Hillary Clinton, whom I admire greatly. Medicaid is also what paid for all four of my kids’ births, from my ex-wife and current wife.
–My family spent time on food stamps (“SNAP”), and though we no longer qualify for that, we do still receive WIC benefits which help reduce the strain on our grocery budget.
–Another thing that helps enormously is the several thousand we get from the government every year via the EITC.

All of these elements of the safety net that we depend on are now in jeopardy.

So MAYBE I’m not quite what you pictured, eh?

“you want to squeeze the hose and put the whole ball of wax deeper into the hands of the globally vested under the pretense that ,its ok if we destroy our great good, and the possible good of our working class,,as long as the extreme wealthy,their proxies and minions (who maintain a similar value structure). get theirs……”

Congratulations for creating the most egregious straw man of all time. I certainly did not say anything remotely resembling this.

So really Alan bottom line your fear mongering propaganda comes down to everything would be more expensive.. the cost of living would go up…..Yeah it is naive to think any one class with the power to dominate another using all its resources and enforcement capabilities would allow us to return to a time where we had good jobs and our national sovereignty and constitutional guarantees …..where we were not in danger of losing our national identity etc from the dynamics involved with globalization and its extreme profiteers..and their great thrust to acquire power…much like the b.s. about spreading democracy around the world..lol..

Let me say this I grew up in the warring ghetto in transition from poor working and middle class white to black, seen King march,spent three years in a war zone,and…have been to all the dark places that make men poop their pants….have labored with blood,sweat and tears and worked the ghetto for over 26 years ….,you my friend are the whiny crybaby..whining to ensure you maintain a paradigm where the people who own the interest ….that serve you.. and the interest of your like….. are served at the expense of all others ..you whine to keep that in power and do so by citing economic dynamics that came about as a result of their great greed in the first place ,and then you have the audacity to dress it up as serving mankind..while you demean and negate your people here in our nation

Well take our good jobs and a lesser statured wealthy,our constitutional guarantees not to be diminished by the arrival of outside interest serving themselves at the expense of our goods..well take our national sovereignty…and then maybe we can start to call things as they are instead of how a select few would skew them to serve their self interest….btw your failure to comprehend a thing isn’t automatically turned into my inability to express it…..

Yes Alan worked 12 hours that day 12 hours today.I work for myself I ask nothing from government ,not because I don’t believe in a safety net..but because coming up in extreme poverty I cant bring myself to be there psychologically .And yes when I reply to this thread I am tired..I put down incomplete thoughts and my grammar is terrible at times..
So what..
..I do not appreciate cherry picking and intellectual arrogance from anyone….but if you got the point…then whats the point……..
The pretense thought that I didn’t finish was about wall street,the NEW democratic party and the same families in banking etc who have shoved globalization down our throats in a way that they dress up as serving our interest as a nation,when in fact it serves some few extremely well ,a portion of our people, though it has disenfranchised many more….and look at the residential mortgage fraud..we lost a third of mthe middle class and hillary who i far from admire brought us what the wealthy throughout history have always brought first to the table TRINKETS…Like they did the indigenous…

The poor for instance ,in the last eight years have become so much more impoverished and their wellbeing so much more undone…No wonder such strong resentment and defeatism exist ,its a sad friggin thing that I see and experience thru a number of those around me and myself at times…
….there’s the part that poverty must work on itself………and then there’s the great greed of this paradigm that is essentially destroying our brothers and sisters.blood and water…..and even if I might fight with them on some things… I care for them because I get it..

…So no I do not support the removal of a safety net because if we really want to reduce spending and save then we should disassemble the corporate welfare system..And the pittance for food and shelter is money well spent…especially when 20% of the pop. own 80% of the money…

Trump will bring a lot of things to the table that I will not like…..The truth is .neither party serves the people……,powerful interest are served powerfully and weaker interest accordingly….

.Infrastructure,some measure of protectionism (and that word is flavored,like many words used on television) Jobs and the right to dissent from the herd and especially diminishing where possible the banks and wall street and the same wealthy shareholders pulling the media strings……..And striking back against placing the truth of a thing as secondary to propriety..the fear of offense ..the tethering of truth to propriety and such..this is what we want from this guy…..All must be subject to criticism that includes minorities whether they are acting as a black interest or the minority of wealthy as they truly act as a wealthy interest…all men,cultures,interest,ideas must be subject to criticism..All…..

I am not a trumpster and dam sure am not a clintonite and an independent,we should abolish the party names on run on policy statement but that’s not how people vote and sure wouldnt benefit the fat guys in their nice homes in manhattan laughing at us little people lol

Since this great rush to globalize and essentially the takeover of the democratic party by the same people who run wall street,the banks,the media etc..(so much for objective broadcasting and media,thats a joke to think anything that powerful could remain objective…and the one good thing about the media being so clearly on one side is they have fronted themselves off to the nation and we can see very clearly that THEY ARE AN INTEREST UNTO THEMSELVES…the people who are the ownership who also commissioned Hillary and Bill and Barrack…hillary senate seat )..since this brand of globalization has sunk its teeth into our juglar our poor are deginerating and dying…even with a half black man at the helm…things got exponentially worse…

… The the silk roads early globalization ,I agree it was all inevitable…but its the way we do a thing that counts..Just as you can have all kinds of democracies capitalism as king, tyrannical,paternal…there are myriad ways to go about global trade….

those with the fcc licenses they are crafting a brand of globalization that will make kings and pawns only…Just Their tool media creates many false,though received beliefs…beliefs that do not serve our authentic interest as a nation or a people….We have and all nation ever will have more to fear from internal tyrants,then from 3rd nation terrorist…Hell cigarettes kill many more people than terrorim ever has,..yet when the government fed and states had these guys by the short hairs,they took the money and the false credit of doing something….but never had them take out the carcinogens or addictive agents…that may have saved some jobs..and value to the economy,but it really tells us all we really need to know about man in general and gov. in particular
You assumed I support taking the safety net away from people who need it,even if its a temporary thing or even if they are
So no offense partner keep fighting the good fight

The last line before take care ..was a line I thought i deleted…was going to say I support the safety net even for people who may not deserve it…for a short time…and then I would expect them to grow merit…. or for society to get something back in return like roadwork or something else where they got to give back……..mandatorily give back,if they are working it….its the takers (who strictly take),….in all their myriad form, that our the species problem..not just the nation..

I am one of those poor my friend…. and I live and work amongst those poor, and my family half of them anyways have remained in that class And personally,except for the times I have achieved a measure of greater earnings and more security…
And most of this poverty does not have the experience of making six figures in their life ,nor the skills or wherewithal to make the kind of money I do at TIMES..as in Chicago even with good word of mouth the competition is fierce,the companies I compete with are way better capitalized and personally I have no cushion in the way of family or help from any entities like a wife or family or the benefits that so many take for granted from family friends of family etc..I am alone.
And although I make decently at times my craft hvac is seasonal (like I said I am that plumber tradesman person) And being in business for yourself lends to poverty often especially in an impoverished environment and when competing in a better demographic,where the social proofs and other forms of demonstrating legitimacy to unknown prospective customers becomes more difficult when you bring a less resourced business to the table..

Anyways the experience of living in and amongst as well as the benefit of others experiences ,the general environment as seen and demonstrated by the murder rate for instance and comparing it to the condition of poverty since I was a child…the drugs,the gangs,the people all become much more desperate and dog eat dog..it is worse than I have ever seen it..
That is way better a barometer than the media and their bullshit.. figures lie and liars figure…come bye Ill be glad to take you on a tour of the south and west sides o0f Chicago and then well go north and contrast..

Further do the deduction..loss of manufacturing jobs,murder rates,loss of income that would of come from a robust middle class and the great gobbling up wealth and lack of investment in our nation’s infrastructure etc etc etc…globalization and its few winner’s.automation etc..and thinking like the kind your expressing..(no offense)…so things things have presently been correlated with crime and all the other conditions of poverty and it didn’t take a genius to see that all these years..(that since the exponential growth of globalization on the wealthy’s terms alone) but were just now hearing about it on the tv and radio..lol..duh to those people in the bubble is what poverty might verbalize if it could and then if it could effectively,it would say,its a mechanistic ,cause and effect economy and social structure…were dying here…..

Gee kind of like the three times I was in Afghanistan ,just ask the Afghan workers on base where;s bin laden ,they all say hes in pakistan..lol…couple years later they find the guy…same mentality.
.if a person or a geographic area is in a bubble ..or they are just not self aware…then I could understand this not knowing..
though otherwise I would have to say ,the argument of saying that the poor are not worse off,is just an attempt to make the argument absurd and discredit the fact’s of the matter..to fit ones ideology..and isnt it funny the roles have reversed here the dem saying all is well and the ex dem saying hey the rep. are the ones with a plan to help..look at what this brand of left thinking has done ,it disenfranchised us for the abstract and for their self interest..and the academics abandoned us for what the dragon could do for them as well..and for their children…as I said about demonstrating the proclivities of man in general and gov in particular when it comes to self and class interest…

This is Gingrich style “truthiness”. If you won’t even respect statistics from the most authoritative sources, there’s no point even trying to discuss this with you. You have your conclusions, go ahead and proceed from them, knock yourself out. I’m done trying to reason with you. (I wonder what Wes would suggest one should do in this kind of situation?)

And it is dubious that the rep plan will be implemented in the way we need,but it is something at least …and…..
.
and correction…(if a person or a geographic area is in a bubble ..or they are just not self aware…then I could understand this not knowing..)

I meant to say if the person or people in that geographic area are in a bubble…….then I could understand this not knowing…but there’s another reason,besides denial for those in the other class’es …and poverty just trying to keep up the hope and avoid pure defeatism etc..
….there is what they are being told by a media…A media that has become like another branch of government,like a family member,like the priest or neighbor…another aspect of this is the herd mentality and the pain that comes with dissent from that mentality…..and the desire to avoid the conflict that is the price of dissent …their is a social coercion that comes with that herd mentality ,when the television is telling us what our neighbor think’s…..its seems to be the Authority..it is not,it is an interest which serves other associated interest..of course it is..it would be childlike to believe that great power would allow true objectivity,that kind of thinking is for children..

Your idea of the most authoritative is so heavily influenced by your ideology that you fail to look for the most objective sources..And the bend of a media or any other sources that fail to quantify and qualify objectively as possible, is the issue regarding ascertaining the fact’s.They highlight and diminish to suit,..use flavored terms and phrases they have cultivated and massage the message…all this is very old old stuff in history…it is childlike to pretend ,because you need to be right,that many, in fact, most sources are not to one degree or another touched by money or their own interest in regards to the presentation of a thing….God even the politics at work or within your peer group is more heavily flavored than that and there’s not 64 trillion dollars.in that marketplace..Freud-“Man is wolf to Man”..dont buy into any of this ,then your of course playing a role..get over it pal..

It is clear historically and when we look at the human condition (which from your commentary you seem to have little experience with or your being disingenuous and fronting..ea. never made more then 10.00 an hour.plus I attempted to be polite and engaging..and you are still acting out.)
that powerful interest are served powerfully and leverage all ……..information as the perception of a thing,the received truths that Americans embrace are the hearts and minds,… the narrative that they want to maneuver you into buying…and they is anyone searching to further his interest to survive and thrive..and for the upper class and its workers ,its more about a similar value system than some sort of conspiracy…though in a sense its byproducts are similar and of course collusion is a norm as well..
Look around the world ,read your history,open your mind and interact with everyone

.I was not only a member of occupy I was a speaker and was arrested for my beliefs..what have you done?
You want to promote a belief system that resembles disneyland when the rest of the world still lives on planet earth regarding power,politics and human nature…Go off the reservation my friend and claiming that you have some street cred in order to be credible in relation to this conversation is pathetic,if your circumstances are as you described,then your thinking and ideology go against your authentic interest…the opportunity to have an opportunity, a great influx of investment (imperfect as it is),and a rebuilding of the middle class into a more robust class with more leverage…and the benefit the ripple effect for the poor..

.If you say I am mistaken about the state of poverty,your either isolated and in some sort of a bubble and/or full of it,you so badly want to be right…That desire serves one thing alone…And your inability to be moved is a child of that same making..
10.00 an hour and you fail to relate to the truth of the matter and admit poverty is worse off and exponentially so?!!…..then your dishonesty betrays your reasoning as well..
later Ill keep it civil

BTW mr 10 an hour and I get snap benefits..you wouldn’t make it in my world..so making fun of it just makes you a pretender..Id love to give you a tour of Chicago you wouldn’t forget..lol…Guess this is how u act when u get handed your behind ..Now your not worth responding too..

“I’m in complete sympathy with your objection to the idea of something being “true for you” or “true for me.” But it seems to me you’ve gotten the details backwards. Beliefs (or sentences, or propositions) are what’s capable of being true or false, not things. Is the coffee cup on my desk true? The question doesn’t make sense; it’s a category mistake. The coffee cup just is. My belief that there’s a coffee cup on the desk is true (if, in fact, there’s a coffee cup on my desk.) In standard correspondence theories of truth, being true is a property of beliefs that correspond to facts, or states of affairs, or what-have-you.”

Point taken. All I really meant, let’s say in the case of “God exists” or “There is a coffee cup on my desk”, is that each statement is either true or it isn’t, completely independent of the belief. It’s silly to say that two individuals who have an opposing view can each each have a belief that is “true” by saying it’s “true for me”. That kind of thinking waters down the notion of “truth” to the point of it having no real meaning at all. Just say that it suits you to believe something or that it is useful to believe it.

Fascinating discussion and a masterclass from Wes this time round (see also the Burke episode, where he grappled fairly head-on with the issues and made Seth’s jeering interventions sound embarrassing).

It could have been better to have some sort of openly conservative philosophical voice on the podcast, as it all got too wrapped up in awkward Democrat lamentations that on many key issues just missed the point.

A couple of belated thoughts from England. I listened to this episode and the first part today (May 2018).

First, it’s all very well saying that the tone of political discourse needs to be ‘persuasive’ and not divisive. But look at the frenzied identity politics bullying by SJWs in so many universities and the drastic lack of conservative voices now in so many universities and media outlets. The fact that the Democrats ‘own’ this behaviour when it suits them is bound to alienate anyone wanting to listen and discuss issues thoughtfully.

Second, part of being persuasive is being open to persuasion yourself. On what core philosophical or policy issues are you PEL folks prepared to concede significant ground to Republicans if they concede significant ground to you? I didn’t hear many examples.

Third, it was odd that at various points you seemed wistfully to want institutions and practices that somehow were ideologically neutral. There are only two issues in politics. Who decides? And who decides who decides?

Once the Supreme Court nominations divide sharply on party lines, the whole legal system is getting polarised around specific ideological interpretations of law. No doubt you can find plenty of examples of Republicans pushing hard and dirty in that direction. But the soaring dishonesty of E Kennedy in opposing Robert Bork set a towering bad standard here.

Likewise ‘gerrymandering’. Does it not strike you as noteworthy that many big US cities that have fallen into decrepitude have been run by Democrats for decades, using leverage with public sector unions to cling to power? Isn’t that a form of gerrymandering too?

One reform not discussed that would help produce electoral churn and political responsiveness would be term-limits for all senior political jobs. If the President gets only two terms, why does anyone else get indefinite tenure and the manipulative power to create the US equivalent of rotten boroughs: stagnant one-party fiefdoms in all directions? Might limiting political power in this way not be a philosophically sound way to proceed?

Both Republicans and Democrats show dizzying levels of corruption when it comes to spending public money and running up debts. The unwillingness of Washington to cut programmes is a serious strategic threat to US stability. Not mentioned.

Calling Republicans irredeemably ‘anti-women’ sounds a bit like left/liberal mansplaining. And it fails at the first hurdle of persuasiveness. Millions of women vote Republican. Millions of women would be happy to see a notably tighter regime on abortion.

Finally, rhetoric. The many absurd lies told by H Clinton might not compete with the bravura lies of D Trump, but they were lies nonetheless. Her smirking vanity in appearing at elite Wall Street banquets to denounce many of her fellow citizens as ‘deplorables’ helped bring her down. Isn’t that to some degree a good thing as a market signal to politicians everywhere not to insult voters?

Oh, and as for the bizarre opening Seth claim that America was heading towards something like Russia-style dictatorship now that Trump had won, maybe he ought to live in Russia for a while.

Conclusion?

A good if often lugubrious discussion. But maybe you’d have benefited from a more searching look at why exactly so many Americans voted for the Trump phenomenon, and why many Democrat attitudes and policies and rhetorical tone really helped make that happen

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